


The Blood of the Covenant

by inexplicifics



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Curse Breaking, Curses, Desperation, Gen, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-26
Updated: 2020-10-26
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:34:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27210547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inexplicifics/pseuds/inexplicifics
Summary: Geralt and Eskel, last of their kind, go hunting the mage who has cursed their fellows.One of them returns to Kaer Morhen.[Written for the flash fic challenge.]
Relationships: Eskel & Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia
Comments: 46
Kudos: 474
Collections: The Witcher Flash Fic Challenge #009





	The Blood of the Covenant

They lost Lambert last year.

It is _lost_ , too: there have been no reports of a witcher dying. No one has brought his silver sword or his medallion to the town at the foot of the Blue Mountains. He has just...vanished, as utterly as if he had never been.

Like Aubry did. Like Frank and Gardis. Like Coën, only three years ago. Like Gaetan of the Cats, if the rumors are true, and Letho of the Vipers. A dozen witchers, vanished like smoke in the wind.

Geralt nearly cries when he sees Eskel and Vesemir: the last of the Wolves, the last of his family. Leaving them in the spring is one of the hardest things he’s ever done.

Coming home to Kaer Morhen the next autumn to discover that Vesemir - solid old Vesemir, reliable as stone - is not waiting there…

Geralt stands in the cold stone hall, boots leaving prints in the dust that shows no one has cleaned in months, and shakes with horror.

He holes up in the stables, not able to bear the thought of sweeping out the stone-cold fireplaces and pretending the keep is still a home without its Wolves.

Eskel finds him there a week later, and they fall into each other’s arms, sobbing with relief. That night they sleep in the hayloft, Roach and Scorpion snuffling quietly in the stalls below them

It’s Eskel who says, late the next morning as they stand in the cold kitchen, making a meal of trail jerky and dried fruit, “He would have left a note to say where he was going. You know he always does.”

It’s one of Vesemir’s habits, left over from the days when there were many more witchers in the keep. He wouldn’t have neglected to leave a note unless something took him while he was _in_ Kaer Morhen, and the old keep still has its wards and protections.

And if they know where he went...maybe they’ll be able to track him.

Maybe two Wolves will be enough to kill whatever it is which bested Vesemir.

Or maybe this will be the end of the witchers, forever.

*

Traveling in winter is foolish, perhaps, but neither Geralt nor Eskel can bear to remain in Kaer Morhen without Vesemir there. Roach and Scorpion both complain and balk all the way down the mountain - they know they’re supposed to get a season in a warm stable, not having to deal with monsters and muck and travel - but they’re good horses and well-trained, so they don’t make too much trouble.

Still, no point bringing them into danger. Geralt finds the inn with the best stables in the town at the base of the mountains and pays the innkeeper most of his year’s take to tend their horses until they return - or until midsummer.

“If we’re not back by then, sell them to someone who will treat them well,” he says, shouldering his packs grimly, as the innkeeper nods. “And tell anyone who comes asking that there are no witchers in Kaer Morhen any more.”

“What of old Vesemir?” the innkeeper asks, eyes wide, and Geralt can’t do anything but shake his head.

He and Eskel head off into the snow, side by side, grim as the winter winds. Vesemir was called away to a town most of the way across Kaedwen, down near the gap in the mountains where four countries’ borders meet at the Pontar River. A long distance for the oldest Wolf to travel, but his note said the plea for help had been desperate.

Crossing Kaedwen in winter is not the most pleasant experience Geralt has ever had, but at least he has Eskel at his side. They stay as close to each other as they can, sharing a bedroll or an inn’s bed (the cheapest bed, always, because Eskel’s purse has to last them the whole way - no one hires monster hunters in winter), hunting for their dinner side by side, never far enough that they cannot hear each other’s breathing, the steady heartbeats which say that they’re alive, they’re here together, they are not yet alone.

They travel faster than any humans could, but the winter is a bitter one, and they have to stop, far more often than they would like, to hole up in inns or caves or abandoned foresters’ huts and wait out the storms. Geralt can’t sleep unless his head is resting against Eskel’s chest, the steady heartbeat soothing as nothing else can be. Eskel meditates instead of sleeping far more often than he should, but Geralt can’t blame him.

They don’t talk much. They don’t have to. They’re the last of the Wolves, and they know each other so well that words have always been almost irrelevant between them.

And at this point, what is left to say?

*

The village is so small it doesn’t even have a name; it’s ‘that one with the big oak tree, twelve miles north of Hagge’ in the letter Vesemir left. The alderman is also the innkeeper, insofar as the little building can be called an inn: there is exactly one room available to rent. But he seems very unsurprised to see Geralt, which _is_ odd. Most villages this small only see witchers maybe once a generation, if that.

“Ah, master witcher, come about the contract?” he asks, and _then_ his eyes widen as Eskel comes in, kicking the snow off of his boots in the doorway. “Oh, there are...two of you? You don’t usually come in pairs.”

“...Do you get many witchers through here?” Eskel asks, frowning in a way he _knows_ makes him look intimidating, the scars turning mere confusion into a dreadful scowl.

“Oh, every couple of years,” the innkeeper says, apparently unfazed. Geralt and Eskel exchange a glance. “They come for the mage what lives up in the foothills.”

Geralt says, slowly, “Did an older witcher come through this summer?”

“Oh yes,” the innkeeper says, nodding cheerfully. “Pleasant fellow.”

He’s not scared of them. He’s not even _worried_. And there’s a strange glassiness to his eyes, now that Geralt’s looking for it; something _off_ , like the very faint scent of rot in meat that’s about to go bad.

Eskel says softly, “Do the other witchers ever come _back_?”

“Of course not,” says the innkeeper, calm as calm.

Geralt and Eskel do not sleep that night, in the dusty little room above the inn’s kitchen. They meditate, back to back, swords unsheathed upon their knees.

In the morning, they head north, into the foothills of the Kestrel Mountains, following an old winding path that is, somehow, unobscured by snow. The drifts are high between the trees, and the falling flakes coat their cloaks in white, but the path stays clear and dry. Geralt does not need the slight thrumming of the medallion about his throat to tell him there is magic at work here.

The end of the path is a little house tucked back against the side of a hill. It looks abandoned: no smoke rises from the chimney, no sound emerges from within its walls. Geralt would almost think they’ve come to the wrong place, but his medallion is humming ever louder, and the hair on the back of his neck is rising the way it does sometimes when a monster has somehow managed to get behind him.

“Let me go first,” he says softly. “Watch my back.”

“Aye, Wolf,” Eskel murmurs.

Geralt steps forward and bangs on the hut’s door. It swings open, silent as the grave.

*

He really shouldn’t be surprised that the room beyond is far, far larger than the little hut could ever hold. This _is_ a mage’s house. He also shouldn’t be surprised by the variety of...things cluttering the walls and hanging from the rafters. The herbs and roots are normal enough, but the twisted metal whatever-they-ares are nothing he recognizes, and the jars with unreadable labels are frankly worrying…

And then there’s the display, in one of the windows, of a dozen little dolls. Something about them draws him and repels him in equal measure. He moves, silent as only a witcher can move, over towards them, frowning. They look like children’s toys, crude clay heads and bodies made of fabric scraps stuffed with wool or straw, but why would a mage have a dozen children’s toys hanging in a window? And what is it about them that makes his medallion throb like a beating, bleeding heart?

“Ah,” says a voice from the shadows. “You’ve found my little dolls.”

Geralt whirls. He can’t see the mage - has no idea where he might be. The voice low and soft, with an odd grating edge to it that makes the hair on his arms stand on end. “Dolls?” he asks.

“Pretty, aren’t they?”

“Sure,” Geralt allows, backing up a slow step towards the windows. “If you like that sort of thing.” He glances at the toys again out of the corner of his eye. The one in the bottom left corner has a tuft of red-dyed wool stuck to its head, a fluffy mess like a duckling’s feathers. The one beside that has undyed grey wool instead, combed smooth. The one above them both has not been given hair…

Just a deep v-shaped scar like a brand across its forehead.

“Fuck,” Geralt whispers. The mage chuckles.

“Oh, yes. They’re lovely little things, really.” A form steps out of the shadows, wrapped in a billowing cloak with the hood thrown back to reveal a face too perfect to be real: skin like fine porcelain, eyes like sapphires, lips like rubies. The bards are always wrong about how lovely that must look; it just looks _terrifying_ , really, in the same way a witcher does. Not quite human, but not quite anything else; just close enough to be _wrong_. “Have you come to join my collection? You’ll make a lovely doll.”

“I’d prefer not to,” Geralt says, backing up another slow step. If he can draw this mage out - keep his attention on _Geralt_ -

He doesn’t even think the rest of that idea. Who knows if this fucker is reading his mind. He thinks instead, as hard as he can, about his horror at the idea that his fellows might be trapped, somehow, in these little clay-and-cloth dolls.

The mage chuckles. “But you came to visit me,” he lilts, drifting closer, running a too-elegant hand along the row of jars on a low shelf. “All of you come to visit me, and you’re so _tired_. So worn down by your Paths. It’s really quite distressing, you know?” He smiles, and it’s beautiful and so, so terrible. “So sad, to think of you all out there _suffering_.”

“You think we’d rather be dolls?” Geralt rasps. His back thumps gently against the wall, jostling a bundle of herbs. He keeps his eyes and his attention firmly on the mage, thinking of nothing at all except how horrified he is by everything about this.

“It’s very peaceful,” the mage promises, still smiling that terrible smile. “No monsters to fight, no Path to travel, nothing but quiet. See, I even hang them in the window so they can see my work! And all together, so they won’t be lonely anymore! Now, don’t you fret, it won’t hurt for but a moment - or at least, none of my dolls have ever _complained_.” He giggles, a dreadful sound like nails against slate, and around his lacquered nails, a spell begins to build.

“Not interested in joining your collection,” Geralt says, eyeing the spell warily, hand creeping up towards his sword hilts. Steel for men, silver for monsters - which will work best against this monstrous mage?

Everything goes wrong all in a moment. Eskel leaps forward, silent as a shadow, right out of the mage’s blind spot, and there’s no way the mage should be able to react in time but he _does_ , whirling and flinging the spell as Eskel’s sword comes down. There’s a blinding flash of light and a clattering sound and then Geralt’s steel sword is sliding home in the mage’s heart, and the mage makes an odd gurgling noise and goes quite limp, blood spattering gently on the floor as his body slumps forward off the sword.

Geralt beheads him and burns the body, just to be certain, and only then looks down, knowing what he’ll see.

There’s a little clay-and-cloth doll sprawled upon the floor, with a tuft of brown wool on its head. Geralt goes to his knees and picks the doll up in shaking hands, turning it over to see the clay face, marked with three long scars.

“No,” he whispers, too softly for even witcher ears to hear.

There’s no response, of course.

*

Geralt raids the mage’s hut for anything of value, finding - unsurprisingly - a fair amount of coin, a goodly heap of gems, and several bolts of expensive silk. He packs the gold and gems away, and uses the silk to very, very carefully wrap each doll, cushioning the clay heads so they will not break.

He tucks them into his bags, shaking hands as gentle as he can make them, and leaves the mage’s hut behind. Before he closes the door, he turns and casts _Igni_ , as strongly as he can. It’s nothing like Eskel’s dragonfire, of course, but it’s enough to burn the mage’s hut to ash and gone.

The innkeeper is unconscious when Geralt makes it back to the village. So is everyone _else_ , Geralt discovers. He puts his packs down in the dingy old room he and Eskel shared, and goes around the village, tracking the people by their heartbeats and laying them out carefully on their own beds, banking the fires and feeding the animals. He has no idea how long they’ve been under the mage’s thrall, so he also has no idea how long it will take them to _recover_ , or even if they ever will.

He helps himself to some of the food in the inn’s kitchen, leaving a heap of gold upon the counter - far too much for such simple fare and a single night’s stay, but perhaps enough to help make up for the mage’s cruelty - and does not sleep that night. He can’t meditate properly, either; the mage’s horrid giggle keeps echoing in his ears, and the clatter of a doll falling helpless to the ground.

In the morning, he can hear people beginning to move, to ask each other what has happened; he slips silently out the back of the inn and heads east and north, for Kaer Morhen, because he has no idea where else to go.

Crossing Kaedwen alone, in the depths of winter, is a good way to die in the wilderness where your body will never be found, but somehow Geralt makes it back to the foot of the Blue Mountains. He’s far too thin and he hasn’t slept in _weeks_ and he looks more like a wraith than a witcher, but he makes it. The innkeeper who has been keeping Roach and Scorpion takes one look at him and recoils as from a monster, but he gives Geralt a room for the night all the same.

Geralt piles gems upon his counter and tells him to look after the horses, because fuck knows _he_ can’t, and goes up the Trail, step by careful step.

It almost kills him. He _knows_ better than to climb the Trail this late in winter, when the snow drifts and the treacherous ice conspire against the unwise traveler. His feet skid in their too-slick boots, and the usual landmarks are covered in a blanket of undifferentiated whiteness, and too often his eyes are blinded by snow or sleet or tears.

He makes it, somehow. He stumbles into the great hall - cold as the outside, save for the lack of wind - and falls to his knees before the unlit fireplace, and weeps until he thinks his heart will break within his chest, because he has brought them home - no matter if they are not Wolves, this is the last stronghold of the witchers, so it is their home - and yet they are still gone.

One by one he lays them out upon the floor, whispering their names. Eskel first, and then Lambert, and Vesemir. Letho. Aubry. Coën. Frank. Gardis. And then the ones he does not know: one with his eye marred by a terrible scar. One only two-thirds the size of the others, as bald as Letho is. A _woman_ , who must therefore be a Cat, though he does not know her name. One made of darker clay, nearly the color of the dark stone beneath Geralt’s knees. One that is larger than the others, with a nose so badly broken that it is obvious even in clay.

Thirteen witchers, and Geralt. Perhaps all the witchers who remain in all the world -

And they are clay and wool, and he does not know how to rouse them.

*

He does not know how long he kneels there, growing stiffer with each passing moment as the cold of the stone leeches into him. It may well be a whole long night; certainly there is light coming in the windows when he finally stirs.

The first thing he tries is silver, pressing the flat of his sword gently to each doll. Nothing happens. He tries cold iron next, though that rarely works except against the fae. Salt does nothing; nor does the sound of a bell. He even tries pressing a kiss to Eskel’s clay head, praying that his soul-deep affection for his brother will be enough to count as true love.

Nothing works.

He goes up to the half-ruined library, the dolls tucked into his tunic for safekeeping, and pulls out every tome he can find which speaks of cursebreaking, and spends days poring over them, trying everything that does not look like it will damage the dolls. Herbs rubbed into their cloth limbs, bundles of twigs tapped against their clay heads, magical words murmured over the dolls. Nothing, nothing, nothing.

He eats when he remembers to - rarely - and sleeps when his body demands it, though his rest is fitful and full of nightmares. He wakes thinking he has heard Vesemir calling him, or Lambert swearing, or Eskel’s quiet snoring, and weeps bitter tears each time he finds his brothers still nothing but cloth and clay.

He runs out of books.

He runs out of ideas.

He’s gone a month without proper sleep; he’s lost more weight than he ever has since the horrible months after Blaviken. He keeps thinking he hears his brothers calling his name in the wind outside.

He’s fairly sure it’s encroaching madness that gives him the idea, but he doesn’t much care anymore.

Geralt brings the dolls down to the shattered laboratories that used to turn boys into witchers - those who did not die. He wants to turn _dolls_ back into witchers - surely that’s about the same? And he’s got no mutagens, no Grasses to awaken them, but he can fix that.

He lays them out tenderly, one doll on each stone table, and takes the long water-steel knife that Eskel gave him years ago from off his belt, and presses the razor edge of it against his wrist.

The blood is very dark in the dim light of the laboratory, and as it drips down onto Eskel’s clay head, it soaks in, vanishing without a trace. That’s more than anything _else_ he’s tried has done. He cuts deeper, lets more blood flow, and it soaks in and soaks in, far more than clay should hold, until the little cloth body begins to swell.

Geralt is swaying now, weak with blood loss, but he slices deeper, keeping the cut open despite his too-fast healing, and the doll grows and grows and grows. Geralt falls to his knees beside the table, arm resting weakly against the doll’s graven mouth, and the world gets dimmer and dimmer as his eyes begin to grow hazy, but it’s _working_.

It’s working.

It _worked_.

He wavers and falls, and the world goes dark.

*

Geralt wakes in his own bed, feeling like he fought a mated pair of wyverns and maybe lost. There’s a soft, steady heartbeat beside the bed, one he knows as well as his own.

He lets his head loll to the side, and opens his eyes to the welcome sight of Eskel, meditating in a chair beside the bed. He rouses as soon as Geralt shifts.

“Wolf,” he says softly, and bends over, putting a hand on Geralt’s chest to keep him in place. Geralt feels weak as a kitten; he doesn’t even bother to struggle.

“Eskel,” he says.

Eskel leans down to rest their foreheads together. “Don’t scare me like that, Wolf,” he murmurs.

“Same to you,” Geralt croaks.

Eskel sighs.

It takes them the rest of the winter to rouse the rest of the witchers. With Eskel helping, enough food and drink to give Geralt most of his usual strength back, and a steady supply of Full Moon and Swallow, Geralt doesn’t pass out again, though it’s close more than once. They wake Vesemir first, and then Lambert, and after that Geralt sort of loses track, moving through the days in a haze of soup and sleeping and potions.

He comes back to himself as the warm spring wind begins to melt the snow. There are thirteen other witchers in Kaer Morhen now: six Wolves, three Cats, one Griffin, one Viper, one Bear, one Manticore. Maybe all the witchers left on the continent.

Geralt comes down from his room, leaning hard on Eskel’s shoulder as his feet try to give out beneath him, to a warm hall and a table set with steaming dishes, and Kaer Morhen finally feels - again - like home.


End file.
